Aureal Blasts Creative Labs

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War of words heats up in wake of lawsuit filings.

By IGN Staff

Earlier this week Creative Labs, makers of the Sound Blaster line of PC cards, filed a lawsuit against Aureal, charging it with false advertising. It was the second lawsuit Creative has filed against its competitor this year.

At issue are claims about Aureal's A3D technology on the one hand and Creative Lab's Sound Blaster Live technology on the other. Both are 3D audio APIs, similar in purpose and in direct competition with another.

According to Creative, Aureal took some specifications off Creative's site and misrepresented them in a point-by-point comparison of the two technologies. Hence Creative's false advertising claims.

"Creative seems to prefer to bring these issues to a courthouse rather than resolving them either directly or in the marketplace," said Brendan O'Flaherty, Aureal's vice president and general counsel. He then said Creative has made misleading statements about Aureal's technology in the past, as well.

"If we ran to a judge each time this happened, no one would have time to develop products, let alone improve upon them," said O'Flaherty. He then challenged Creative to join Aureal in jointly presenting the product information to the consumers.

O'Flaherty then condemned Creative's use of lawsuits and suggested Aureal might be forced to file counterclaims of its own.

"While we are disturbed by this type of behavior in the legal arena, and consider it highly counterproductive to both the business environment for technology development and the legal system in this country, we take all lawsuits seriously and will vigorously defend our right to provide meaningful product comparison information to the marketplace," said O'Flaherty.

"We hope that Creative will come to the table to work together on improving marketing information flow rather than pursuing such lawsuits," he said. "The absence of such productive actions will only force us to file counterclaims and further fill the court calendar -- not our preferable course of action."